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The Value of Foreign 


By the President 


Missions of the United States 


> Sages LATE 


The Urgency of the 
Task Bhitah, Ambaesader 


Laymen’s Missionary MOVEMENT 
1 Madison Avenue New York 


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Sed Taney 
UOTE. 


The 
Value of Foreign Missions 


By the 


Honorable William H. Taft 
President of the United States 


The Urgency of the Task 


By the 


Honorable James Bryce 
Ambassador of Great Britain to the 
United States of America 


Author of 
“The American Commonwealth,’’ Etc. 


LayMENn’s MIssIONARY MOVEMENT 
1 Mapison AVENUE 
New York 


Shorthand Report of Addresses Delivered at 
the Washington Convention of the National 
Missionary Campaign of the Laymen’s Mis- 
sionary Movement. 


The Value of Foreign Missions 


By Hon. William H. Taft 


I like to think, whether it be true or not, 
that we have in this generation reached 
a somewhat different view of the responsi- 
bilities of a civilized nation from that which 
prevailed in the last generation, especially 
as applied to our own country. It was 
perhaps natural that when we were en- 
gaged in digging into the soil and doing the 
best we could to make enough to live on 
that we should fall into the habit of think- 
ing that we were a nation by ourselves with 
no responsibilities whatever with respect 
to the rest of the world. And so we have 
had maxims come down to us and a con- 
struction put upon Washington’s Farewell 
Address that would still keep us in a place 
of isolation, and with pleasant remarks, 
and well and politely expressed hopes for 
the welfare of other peoples, but devoting 
ourselves entirely to our own improvement. 


THE MONROE DOCTRINE 


Now, even in the days when that prin- 
ciple was announced and was followed with 
_a good deal of care, there was one doctrine 
which was utterly at variance with it, and 
that was the Monroe Doctrine. That did 
give us some sort of responsibility, and did 


3 


make us asstime some sort of protection 
and interest in the independent nations and 
governments of this hemisphere, and that 
has now enlarged into what I think we 
may call a definite recognition on the part 
of our public men that we have a very dis- 
tinct interest in the welfare, and a very 
distinct duty with reference to the condi- 
tion of the countries of this hemisphere. 
And we have exhibited it in what was, I 
think, we may almost say, the only altruistic 
foreign war that history presents, that in 
which we fought for the liberties of Cuba, 
and the ending of what we regarded at 
that time as a national scandal. 


OBLIGATION TO WESTERN HEMISPHERE 


And so we have gone on. We have 
taken over in a sense a receivership for 
Santo Domingo, and we are helping out 
that country as well as we may; and we are 
doing what we can to preserve the peace 
between the Central American countries. 
And there lies back in the history of this 
continent the possibilities of a heavy obli- 
gation resting upon us should an explosion 
take place and unhappiness and chaos result 
for any of the peoples of this hemisphere. 


THE CUBAN WAR 


Now, that is one step. The Cuban War 
illustrated the fact that when you get into 
a war you never know where you are com- 
ing out. We entered lightly—well, not 


lightly, but with a sense of due gravity, 
4 


and certainly not with a sense of what the 
possibilities were—at Key West and San- 
tiago, and we brought up ten thousand 
miles away at Manila. And then we had 
to take over that government, and we still 
have it. It has cost us a good deal of 
money. 


COST OF HELPING PHILIPPINES 


I had a Democratic Senator ask me the 
other day how much I thought it cost, 
“Right down between us now,” he said. 
Well, I explained to him that the War 
Department accounts showed that so far as 
the Army was concerned down to 1902, it 
had cost us about one hundred and seventy 
million dollars, and that the further cost 
depended upon how you regarded the 
Army. If you thought that we could 
get along with fifteen or twenty thou- 
sand men less than we now have, 
then the whole cost of the Army 
ought to be imposed as a part of our 
foreign policy, which would make from 
twenty-five to thirty millions a year. But 
if you thought that we ought to have an 
Army of the size it is now, and that it 
could be made useful in many ways, then 
it has cost us by reason of our Philippine 
policy upwards of six million dollars. 


MONEY NOT WASTED 


Now, perhaps I am a little bit extreme. 
Perhaps my experience in the Philippines 


_ has colored my view of the situation. But 


5 


I do not think that the money that we have 
spent in that way, even estimating it at the 
highest sum, has been wasted in any way. 
I think it has developed our national char- 
‘acter. It has broadened us into a view of 
our national responsibilities as no other 
experience could. No one can say that we 
have been there—I mean conscientiously 
say, I mean “right down between us,” that 
we have been there for the exploitation of 
our own business. I do not mean to say 
that it may not come along, and I think it 
will, and I hope it will, but certainly we 
have not made any money out of it up to 
date. And certainly we have not been there 
and have not done the things that we have 
done with a view to our business profit. 


CONDITIONS BETTERED 


We have been there conscientiously (and 
I think I can speak for part of those who 
have been charged with its immediate re- 
sponsibility) for the betterment of the peo- 
ple of the Philippine Islands. And I am 
sure we have bettered their condition. We 
are in the position of many a man who 
sought to help another man, and if we go 
into that sort of thing for undying grati- 
tude, we might as well give it up in the be- 
ginning. It does not continue, and it does 
not persist, and the only benefit that you 
can get out of it is the consciousness of 
having tried to do something for another 
man, and the belief that you really have, no 
matter what he thinks about it. 


6 


Now, I was thrown into the Philippines 
against my will. Well, I won’t say that; 
I am a person, I presume, who could say 
yes or no, but I mean I was led into it by 
another, by that sweet nature, that most 
engaging character, that lovely man, Wil- 
liam McKinley. And I know what actuated 
him, and I know that the spirit that actuated 
him influenced us all: his successor, Theo- 
dore Roosevelt, his secretary, Elihu Root, 
and all who had the good fortune to serve 
under those great men. 


THE IMPORTANCE OF MISSIONS 


And in the control and government of 
those Islands, I first became aware of the 
importance of foreign missions. And if I 
may say so, I think there is a strong analogy 
between the spirit that leads a nation into 
what we have done in Cuba, in Santo Do- 
mingo, and in the Philippines, and that 
movement which I am glad to see growing 
stronger and stronger, the movement in 
favor of foreign missions, 


PHILIPPINES AN EXAMPLE 


The Philippine Islands themselves are an 
example of what ancient foreign missions 
could do. They are the only people, the only 
race in the Orient that are Christians, and 
they were made so three hundred years 
ago by the earnest effort of Augustinian 
and Franciscan friars. They led them on, 
taught them the agricultural arts, and led 


4, 


them on to a peaceful and religious life. 
They did not believe in too much education, 
and they did not believe in bringing them 
into close union with the European nations. 
They thought there was a good deal that 
they might learn there that would hurt them, 
and they preferred to keep them—I don’t 
mean all of them, but all but a selected few, 
in a state of tutelage—Christian peoples. But 
that which they wrought has been to our 
advantage in working out the problem that 
we are set to there, the problem of teaching 
them self-government. They are a Christ- 
ian people, and they look to Europe and 
America for their ideals, and they recog- 
nize those ideals, and that makes it possible 
to instill in them the principles of civil 
liberty and the freedom of our institutions. 


INFLUENCE OF EARLY CHRISTIANITY 


Now, there came about in the Islands 
what is perfectly natural, that the preva- 
lence of one denomination led to, and the 
division between the Spanish and the native 
priesthood led to, a good deal of demoral- 
ization in the Church; led to its taking on a 
very strong political character. The condi- 
tion has greatly improved since we went in 
there, in that regard, because, of course, 
we carried with us entire freedom of re- 
ligion, and that has led to the sending in 
of missionaries other than the Roman Cath- 
olic denomination, and has brought about a 
spirit of emulation and competition that 
makes for the good of the entire Islands 


8 


and for all the churches. But the operation 
of the foreign missions there, the effect 
upon the people, the influence which the 
Church exerts and which it constantly tries 
to exert, and without which the govern- 
ment could carry on few of its reforms, 
all impress itself upon a man charged with 
the responsibility of civil government in 
those Islands. 


MOVEMENTS ON THE MAINLAND 


Being in the Orient, I could not but take 
an interest in what occurred on the main- 
land. Every time you travel around the 
world, or travel anywhere, you have to 
refresh your geography. The Philippine 
Islands are about sixty-six hours from 
Hongkong, and they are a great many 
thousand miles from other parts of the 
Orient; but here we are apt to associate 
them all together. And perhaps after all 
it is not improper to do so, because distances 
there do not seem quite so great as they do 
here, and you do come closer to China when 
you are in the Philippines, very consider- 
ably, than when you are here. That made 
those of us who were in the Orient study 
somewhat the Chinese question, study some- 
what the movements that were going on 
in the great empire of four hundred mil- 
lion people. 


MISSIONS THE INSPIRATION OF MODERN 
CHINA 


And the chief movement that was going 
on was a movement that found its inspira- 


9 


tion, that had its progress in the foreign 
missions that have been sent there to intro- 
duce Christian civilization among the peo- 
ple. I do not hesitate to say that, because 
I am convinced of the fact. They are the 
outposts of Christian civilization. Each 
missionary with his house and his staff 
forms a nucleus about which gathers an 
influence far in excess of the numerical 
list of converts. They have a political 
influence, an influence upon the govern- 
ment of China itself, and upon the Vice- 
roys of China who exercise so much power 
there, that we do not understand, and the 
movements, the development of China to- 
day, and her budding out as she has and 
as I hope she will continue to do, is largely 
the result of, first, the missionary move- 
ment, and, then, the education in America 
and elsewhere under the influence of those 
missionaries, of able young Chinamen who 
are anxious that their country shall take 
the position that her wealth, and her num- 
bers, and her resources, and her possi- 
bilities, and her history justify. 

The same thing is true, though I am not 
so familiar with it, in regard to Africa. 

MISSIONARIES THE OUTPOSTS OF 
CIVILIZATION 

The men who take their lives in their 
hands and go among the natives are en- 
titled to be called the outposts of civiliza- 
tion. They have been criticised, and I 
presume that is something that is common 
to humankind. They have been held up 


Io 


to contempt at times. I have read books, 
doubtless you have; I know one by a very 
distinguished authority who visited China 
and thought it wise to poke fun at what 
he called the “assumed self-sacrifice” of 
the missionaries in China. But I am glad 
to say—I have not seen it myself, but I am 
glad to say that I understand that that au- 
thority has withdrawn all those implications 
and all those criticisms of the men who 
were fighting the cause of Christian civi- 
lization in that great country. 


IMPORTANCE OF SENDING MISSIONARIES 


You visit a Chinese mission—I mean 
a denominational mission in China from 
this country or Great Britain—and you will 
find a large house, you find a considerable 
staff, you find as near comfort as they 
can have in a country that does not know 
what Occidental comfort is; but you find 
upon examination that they have to go 
out among the sick, they have to pursue 
their course of life far away from friends 
and homes, they have to undergo that 
homesickness that no one understands until 
he has been ten thousand miles away from 
home and is longing just to get the smoke 
of his own home, dirty as it is, that he is 
near where he once grew up, and that his 
neighbors are about him. The lives they 
lead, the good they do, and the character 
of representatives that they are of the 
highest of our civilization, is what makes 
it so important that they should be sent, 


II 


and be sent with all the instruments of 
usefulness possible into those far distant 
lands. 

A CONTRAST 


I do not like to reflect upon anybody. It 
is wiser not to be too emphatic and too de- 
nunciatory, but I am bound to say that in 
those distant lands, a great many who visit 
there for gain and for so-called business, 
for so-called livelihood that they could not 
earn at home, are not representatives of 
our best elements. And they visit there 
for other purposes than the spread of 
Christian civilization. They “take in” the 
native when they can, and they do not 
impress the native who has only them to 
judge by that the civilization which they 
represent would be any great improvement 
on that which they have. Now, when I 
contrast them with the missionaries who go 
there only for disinterested purposes and 
who spread their influence throughout the 
entire country, risking their lives by going 
into parts of the country where, should an 
uprising occur, there is no adequate pro- 
tection, it always makes me indignant to 
hear anybody express contempt of those 
men who are carrying the banner of Chris- 
tian civilization and putting themselves in 
positions where they may be complete sac- 
rifices to the cause. 


REAL CAUSE OF BOXER TROUBLE 


They say they were the cause of the 
Boxer trouble. Well, anybody who looks 


I2 


into that knows that they were the ones 
who had to bear the danger of it, because 
they were where the danger was, but the 
cause of the Boxer trouble came from a 
sense on the part of the Chinaman, and he 
is not without sense, that there was a dis- 
position on the part of a good many of the 
so-called Christian powers to divide up, 
and the division was going to be between 
parts of China. That was their fear of 
foreign intervention, and they manifested 
it in a plain way, and the missionaries, who 
were among them for the purpose of 
spreading Christian civilization, had to 
bear the brunt of it. Now, that is just 
about the substance with respect to it, and 
that is the ground for the criticism of the 
missionaries in respect to the Boxer move- 
ment. 


WHOLE BODY OF MEN NEEDED 


There is to be, I believe, a centenary of 
the missionary movement in Africa, and, 
I believe, with that fatuity that I exceed 
anybody in, I have agreed to go and make 
a speech there. So, I am not going into 
that part of the world. I am going to keep 
where I know a little more about it in this 
meeting. I sincerely hope the result of 
this meeting will give to the movement for 
foreign missions an impetus that, with due 
respect to our clerical brethren, it cannot 
have unless the whole body of good men in 
the community press for it. I have spoken 
of it solely from a layman’s standpoint, and 


13 


not from a purely religious standpoint, but 
I have spoken of things that I think I 
know, and am here not so much to talk, as 
by my presence to express the deep sympa- 
thy I have in this movement that you, I 
hope, are most successfully inaugurating. 


14 


The Urgency of the Task 


By Hon. James Bryce 


I am here only for the formal duty of 


presiding during the last hour of your con- 
-yention meeting, a meeting which has so 


much surpassed the expectations, high as 
they were, of its promoters, and which has 


been a splendid augury for the future. And 


it is only a very few words, indeed, that 
I feel like attempting to say to you, not 


that I can contribute anything to add to 


the appeals for active Christian work in 


the mission field which have been put to 


you already, but that I want to mention one 
point which has come forcibly before me, 
connected with the spread of missions, 
partly as a traveler in many parts of the 
world, and partly as having in connection 
with the foreign and colonial policy of my 
own country had to perceive and study 
what was passing in those parts of the 
world with which Britain is concerned. 


AMERICA’S RESPONSIBILITY 


I was greatly struck, gentlemen, by the 


- wise, weighty words which were addressed 


to you at the opening meeting of this con- 
vention by the President of the United 
States. He spoke to you upon the responsi- 
bility which the people of the United States 


15 


had undertaken by going to the Philippine 
Islands and becoming responsible for the 
government of that country and the ad- 
vancement of that race. And he spoke of 
the duty which their political action there 
threw upon them to do everything to ad- 
vance the civilization and the Christianiza- 
tion of the peoples of those Islands. That 
was true, and I could see by the way you 
received it, that you felt it to be true, and 
that you felt that in God’s providence prob- 
ably you are called, and were called, to those 
Islands in order that you might do your 
duty in the way of civilizing and Christian- 
izing them. 


DUTY OF CHRISTIAN NATIONS 


Now that is a part, and only a part, of 
the responsibility which rests upon all of 
us for doing what we can for the civiliza- 
tion and Christianization of the world. It 
is most incumbent, perhaps, upon you in 
the United States and upon us in Britain 
and Canada, because of all the European 
races we are those which have most gone 
out into the world and which have most 
come into contact, partly as traders, partly 
as governors, with all the backward peoples; 
but it is a responsibility which belongs to 
everyone of the European stocks, a respon- 
sibility which we who are Christians ought 
to feel that we must recognize and take up 
and endeavor to discharge. 

You are met here at this convention, and 
similar conventions have been held and are 


16 


being held over the breadth and length of 
this continent; you are met to show that 
you feel that responsibility and are willing 
to take it up, and the responsibility met 
already gives us the amplest hopes of suc- 
cess. 


THE PRESENT URGENCY 


But what I want to put to you for three 
minutes just now is the special urgency at 
this moment of your endeavoring to fulfill 
that responsibility. I see at the head of the 
program of the Washington Convention 
that your watchword is THE EVANGEL- 
IZATION OF THE WORLD IN THIS 
GENERATION. 


THE OLD LIFE AND CUSTOMS CRUMBLING 


Why in this generation? I want to give 
you a reason for the great urgency of the 
question. The moment which we are now 
living is a critical moment, or perhaps the 
most critical moment there ever has been in 
the history of the non-Christian races— 
most significant and weighty upon their 
fate and their future. In this time of ours 
the European races have obtained the con- 
trol of nearly the whole world, and the in- 
fluence over even those parts of the world 
in which they do not exercise political con- 
trol. Our material civilization is permeat- 
ing every part of the world and telling as 
it never told before upon every one of the 
non-Christian races. It is transforming the 
conditions of their life. They in their 


17 


countries are being exploited as never be- 
fore, and means of transportation are be- 
ing introduced as they never were before, 
which enable foreigners to pass freely 
among them, and which are completely 
breaking up and destroying the old organ- 
ization and civilization, such as it was, that 
existed among them. Under this shock, not 
only the material conditions of their life, but 
also their traditions and beliefs, their old 
customs, and everything that was associated 
with, and depended upon, their beliefs and 
their customs, is rapidly crumbling away 
and disappearing. Their morality, such as 
it was, was associated with their beliefs 
and traditions. This we are destroying. 
This must perish under the shock and im- 
pact of the stronger civilization which we 
have brought with us. 


NOW IS THE TIME TO GIVE THE SUPREME 
GIT 


What I want to put to you, gentlemen, is 
the supreme importance at this moment of 
our doing what we can to fill that void 
which we have made, to give them some- 
thing to live by instead of that by which 
they have lived heretofore. Now, when the 
old things are passing away from them, is 
the time for us to give them something new 
and something better by which they may 
live, through which they may come again 
into a truer progress than they ever could 
do in their ancient ways. This is the time 
for us to give them the one supreme gift 
which the world has ever received and in 


18 


which we believe the safety and future hope 
of the world lie, a knowledge of the life and 
the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ. That 
is what we are called upon to give them. 

THE PRESENT A CRITICAL, FAVORABLE 

MOMENT 

We are called upon now to seize this 
critical moment, which is also a favorable 
moment, to provide them with the means 
and basis and the foundation of life instead 
of that which has crumbled from beneath 
them. Let Christianity go to them, not as 
a destroying force, not as being the mere 
confession of those who are grasping their 
land and trying to turn to account their 
labor ; let it go as a beneficent power which 
is to fill their souls with new thoughts and 
new hopes, which is to be a link between 
them and us, which is to be a link between 
all the races of mankind of whatever blood 
and whatever speech and whatever color, 
and which is to teach them that they are all 
the children of one Father in heaven. 


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